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Good news: Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday barred state and local police from using federal law to seize any private property unless an actual crime is being committed.

Holder’s decision allows some limited exceptions, including illegal firearms, ammunition, explosives and property associated with child pornography, a small fraction of the total. This would eliminate virtually all cash and vehicle seizures made by local and state police from the program. While police can continue to make seizures under their own state laws, the federal program was easy to use and required most of the proceeds from the seizures to go to local and state police departments. Many states require seized proceeds to go into the general fund.

A Justice official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the attorney general’s motivation, said Holder “also believes that the new policy will eliminate any possibility that the adoption process might unintentionally incentivize unnecessary stops and seizures.”

As much as I think Holder has been a dishonest and corrupt attorney general who has used his power to attack his political opponents, this decision by him should be lauded highly. It was the right thing to do.

12 comments

Not trusting the move as being pure I will have to assume that it has been established that differently colored people have been effected unfairly by the practice in his estimation and is his motivation.

Sorry, IMO, like the president, Holder is who he is and has demonstrated many, many times his own bias.

I have an idea it partly stems from the way Holder has declared that local police have no authority to enforce federal laws.

Such as the detaining and deportation of Illegal aliens. Basically the demanding of citizenship ID during interactions.

If they can not enforce the laws they can not gain from the confiscation of their possessions.

But he still wants them to enforce the ATF rules and federal gun laws. If I was in charge of a local police department I would just no longer enforce those laws either. Force the feds and ATF to start doing their own dirty work.

Having free speech means that someone can insult someone else’s religion and upset them but those who are upset are never permitted, no should they be of a mind to, redefine the extent of that insult (no matter what the Pope says). Those people, if allowed to, by extension now become the arbiters of what free speech now is and there by now making free speech no longer free. The children’s saying sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never harm me takes on a more significant meaning for adults in this conversation.

When we as Americans or any reasonable civilized people are willing to redefine how we define free speech and are willing to base that redefinition on another’s free speech limits then we have at that point surrendered all of our collective rights and are then ready for, in this case, the Caliphate. Mutual respect is usually the way to go but when there are vast logical and moral gaps that exist between cultures there is no other way to distinguish or protest those gaps then the insulting joke, cartoon or disgusting comedic observation. Free speech, not limited speech identifies and begins the conversation that must happen if these differences are to ever be able to be addressed.

After six years of this A-hole, I’m sure there is a nefarious reason behind the announcement, but it does make a step in the right direction for once. Now if we can just get the biggest offender (the IRS) to cease and desist with this unconstitutional practice flouting due process…

What I saw in the Afleck conflagration is that he does not and probably can never get the extreme differences between Islam and the Western mentality. He, being a happy talk, Liberal, Hollywood jackass believes that its just a matter of being able to better understanding each other. If he were able to “better” understand he would realize that the two are fundamentally irreconcilable.

Just based on this free speech issue alone demonstrates that Islam must be adhered to and that adherence will in time be driven by the 1 or 5 percent of the extremists. Thats the nature of that animal and to willingly refuse to recognize what is to me the definition of ignorance and you are now an existential threat to your own family.

For a human being to insist on living in a pride of lions as an equal is to in time invite lions to kill and eat you.

Ah, yes. Guilt by accusation/guilty unless you can prove yourself innocent. It is not American. It is not English. It is French (to quote Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain). It is just this attitude that Holder’s decree (hopefully) cures.

From the article: “The law allows such seizures and forces the owners to prove their property was legally acquired in order to get it back.”

The article, though, has a point, in that Holder is likely only doing it to hurt the police, rather than to save We the People from a tyrannical government.

From the article: “The policy will touch police and local budgets in every state. … The action comes at a time when police are already angry about remarks that Holder and President Obama made after the police killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City. Some have accused them of being ‘anti-cop.'”

Of course their anti cop, they find themselves on the wrong side of the power equation for the moment. Both Obama and Holder are the personification of the sixties radical, the sixties radical is based in Marxism. Thats what they were eating growing up, thats what they are.

So we can conclude that the people who find themselves in power in America today indeed, whether consciously or unconsciously (Im kidding about that), are really on the other side of the power equation and find being in control of the police as well as the military a very interesting position to be in. Talk about the fox watching the hen house. Why do you think they are always smerking?

I must agree with Cotour’s first comment. Holder isn’t doing this to promote freedom, he probably thinks he’s helping people of color.
Keep in mind Holder ran 2,000 firearms to the drug gangs in Mexico, hoping for a bloodbath so he and Obama could take away all guns from every citizen. Holder and Obama are beneath contempt just for this reason alone!

I think in long and short term terms. Short term I despise these peoples positions and brand of politics. I find their conclusions about what America is and what it should be in the future comes from a perverted interpretation of history in some instances and the nature of power and how it is manipulated. I believe that I understand how they have come to their conclusions by understanding from where they come, from who they studied and who they followed and associated with in their youth.

Long term I see them as positive examples that gives people a perspective and context in the choices about what direction the people will be pushing our country in the future. My point here is that the conflict must be had, the conversation must be had, the war within the Congress must be had, from the conflict and confusion comes the positive future. Nothing worthwhile comes without struggle and conflict.

This whole assumption on my part of course is dependent that the American Constitution is in full application and our “properly” regulated capitalist system is allowed to function within the parameters of the “free” market.

So short term Im not very happy with the overt manipulations that are plain to me being implemented by both party’s, and long term I am carefully optimistic about the future. This again all hinges on the Constitution NOT being disassembled and replaced by some kind of One World style structure driven by multinational corporations who really have no belief in our country’s sovereignty. The power is in the money but without the country and the Constitution whats the point? What kind of future will there be?

“Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America’s quest for the moon… Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America’s greatest human triumphs.”
–San Antonio Express-News